Category Florida History

In 1968, Alabama’s Democratic former Governor George Wallace who had become a national figure with his “stand in the schoolhouse door” ran for President on the ticket of the “American Independent Party.” The candidacy despite coded words like “crime,” “law breakers,” and “patriotism” was about one thing- race. Wallace had been a populist earlier in […]

Martin Luther King Jr. never met Mohandas Gandhi but yet the Leader of the non-violent Indian Independence movement had a great deal of influence over the similar movement for the liberation of African-Americans from the racist policies of Southern Democratic politicians. MLK Jr. in his own words on Gandhi’s influence on him: King wanted […]

Editors Note: In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. we look back at an article we first ran on the 45th anniversary of Dr, King’s death in April 2013 regarding Dr. King and St Augustine. Today is the 45th Anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination and […]

Editors note: With 2018 a Gubernatorial election year, noted Florida historian and author Robert Buccellato has written a series on past gubernatorial campaigns. We ran part 1 of his series detailing Dan McCarty’s historic 1952 win, the first by a south Floridian today. Part II on Governor McCarty will run later this week. By Robert Buccellato In honor […]

This week in commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King we will be re-running some select pieces on Civil Rights that we have featured in the five plus years this site has been publishing. The first is a rerun of a 2017 piece. Editors note: With the recent legislative […]

Seventy years ago this month a Category 4 storm slammed into southeastern Florida. The storm since referred to as the “Fort Lauderdale Hurricane” approached the southeast coast of the state as a Category 5 but weakened to a strong Category 4 just offshore around Bimini. The storm killed only 17 people in the state far […]

Following Hurricane Irma and its impact on the Keys we look back at the building of the Overseas Railroad, the 1906 Keys Hurricane and of course the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane. The building of the Overseas Railroad was one of great engineering feats in Florida’s history – in fact it might actually be one of […]

Part I covering southeast Florida is here When the Turnpike was originally proposed in he late 1940’s the road was supposed to travel thirty five miles east of Orlando. Thomas B. Manual, a Broward County Commissioner and chair of the Turnpike Commission sought to link southeast Florida with the First Coast destinations of Jacksonville […]

Due to Hurricane Irma we won’t have our latest installment of our month-long series on Hurricane Andrew this week. For those of you who have missed it, here are the earlier pieces of our series which is more pertinent the next few days than ever. By Miami National Weather Service Office Part I: 1966 […]